Top 100 Windows Phone 7 apps cheaper than on Android

Canalys recently posted some research showing that the top 100 apps on iOS cost only a fraction of the top 100 apps on Android.

WPDang added Windows Phone 7 Marketplace to the mix, and found while the average cost of the top 100 apps in iOS was 1.47, and the same on Android was 3.74, the same number on Windows Phone was in-between, at $3.10.

The data should help counter the argument that software is much more expensive on Windows Phone than Android, as that is clearly not the case.

As a small market it is understandable that prices would be higher than the 250 million odd device iOS market, but it is somewhat more difficult to explain why Android apps are so expensive. Suggestions by WPSauce include rampant piracy, which sounds pretty reasonable to us.

As the Windows Phone 7 market increases we expect the price of apps in Marketplace to decrease also, and tend towards the same level as iOS.